Tim Conway vs. Carol Burnett: The Only Woman Who Outlasted His Comic Madness
Throughout her extraordinary career, Carol Burnett has described many unforgettable things — iconic costumes, legendary sketches, and the misery of spending eleven seasons in high heels — but nothing brings out her joy quite like remembering Tim Conway.
To Carol, Tim wasn’t just funny — he was a beautifully disruptive force, a one-man demolition crew who treated every sketch as a personal challenge to break Harvey Korman before the scene ended.
Tim Conway: The Man for Whom Rehearsals Were Optional
As Carol recalls, rehearsals were almost irrelevant to Tim. They were polite suggestions — rough outlines he might acknowledge, but never rely on. The cast would rehearse, block, refine timing, and feel fully prepared.
Then the audience arrived, the cameras lit up… and Tim Conway turned into a walking hurricane of unplanned brilliance.
Carol phrases it best: “He would blow into some bit of business we hadn’t even rehearsed… and there he’d be, doing things we’d never seen before.”
Suddenly, cameramen scrambled, the director held his breath in the control booth, and crew members clung to set pieces as the studio dissolved into laughter. The audience, powerless to resist, was swept up instantly.
Carol always said these moments were “pure gold.” For everyone else, they were controlled chaos.
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Harvey Korman: Tim’s Favorite Target
Carol never hides one undeniable truth: when Tim shared a sketch with Harvey Korman, he saw an irresistible challenge. Harvey’s commitment to professionalism made him the perfect victim — and Tim knew it.
Harvey took comedy seriously. He believed in discipline, precision, and staying in character. To Tim, that meant open season.
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The moment a scene began, Tim became a mischievous force of nature, like a raccoon let loose in a supermarket — unpredictable, relentless, and impossible to stop. Harvey, meanwhile, spent entire sketches dissolving into laughter, shoulders shaking, surrendering to the inevitable. Carol summarized it perfectly: “He prided himself on being a very serious comedic actor… but he could not hold it together when Tim got going.”
Translation: Tim needed mere seconds to reduce Harvey to tears.
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Why It Worked: Tim’s Relentless Commitment to Going Too Far
What Carol admired most wasn’t just Tim’s jokes but his unwavering determination. He didn’t aim for polite laughter — he aimed for total comedic collapse. The kind of laughing that leaves an audience breathless, wiping their eyes, and begging for the sketch to stop so they could recover.
Carol once said, “He would keep at it until the audience could no longer…” She didn’t need to finish; anyone who had ever seen Tim Conway knew exactly how that sentence ended.
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And always at the center of the chaos was Harvey Korman, silently pleading for mercy that never came.
The Tim Conway Effect: Comedy in Its Most Unstoppable Form
What Carol remembers as “pure gold” was Tim Conway’s unmatched ability to take a tightly rehearsed sketch and gleefully send it off the rails. He didn’t just derail scenes — he reshaped them, bending the entire production to his will as cast, crew, and cameras scrambled to keep up.
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When Carol thinks of Tim today, she doesn’t just remember a colleague. She remembers a comedic force so potent that to work beside him was to survive him — and to laugh harder than you ever thought possible. It’s awe, affection, and the kind of joy that leaves you feeling delightfully bruised from laughter.
